All eyes will be on Pittsburgh the week of the G-20 Summit in September, and local government officials, community leaders and the media are talking about what an opportunity this is to elevate the perception of Pittsburgh to something more than a dirty old steel town. Pittsburgh is not the market leader when we think of US cities. It’s definitely not the biggest. It’s not top-of-mind. And it certainly has never been thought of as the most prestigious. These characteristics make Pittsburgh a Challenger Brand city, and they’re why we must break the rules to take our rightful place in the market — as the most innovative and marketable city in the US. (Dream Big! Brand Spanking® Cardinal Rule #4*). (more…)

So what do you think of when you hear the name, Bayer? If you didn’t say Aspirin, you either work for the company or you are a geeky chemist that knows way too much about Bayer’s subdivisions in Healthcare, Nutrition and Material Science.

OK, so Bayer is a huge company with roughly 75,000 employees and many, many important products that probably make our lives better. In fact, its tagline is “Science for a Better Life.” What could be clearer than that?

But, please Bayer marketing people, I beg you to have some consideration for the sensibilities of an innocent, unsuspecting TV watcher (me). I was watching one evening when I started paying attention to a particularly disturbing commercial that showed a vast lawn with a cross-section of the ground beneath teeming with squirmy grubs.

(View the commercial at http://www.bayeradvanced.com/advertising/ Click on ‘Season Long Grub Control’ under TV Commercials in the right-hand column) (more…)